The concept of allocating computer system resources to achieve user performance goals is known. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/876670, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,504,894 "WORKLOAD MANAGER FOR ACHIEVING TRANSACTION CLASS RESPONSE TIME GOALS IN A MULTIPROCESSING SYSTEM", by D Ferguson et al, filed Apr. 30, 1992 and assigned to the assignee of the present invention, shows a process for calculating performance indexes, selecting goal classes whose performance is to be improved and reallocating resources to equitably improve performance. A problem arises in a client/server environment, in which clients (for example, client transactions) are served by one or more servers and one server typically may concurrently be serving more than one client--where the servers are managed by the operating system separately from the clients. The problem is one of managing the servers to accommodate goals (for example, response time goals) set for the client. While it is possible to envision goals being set for the server, the servers are typically not "visible" to the end users of the system who interact with the system through client transactions, so that associating goals only with the clients is more in keeping with the objective of making goals user-oriented.
In the present invention, performance management to meet goals is extended to the client/server environment where clients having different goals may be served by the same or different servers.